a second walk through wales

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: in which it stands will never cease to afford pleasure to the eye of taste. We entered the town at the east end, by crossing a bridge thrown over the Usk, a passage that had been formerly well defended, as is evident from the ruins of a bastion, or round tower, on the left hand, probably of Norman architecture. The bridge is formed of wood on a similar con-t stru£iion, and for the same reason, as that of Chepstow, the tide at each place rising occasionally to the incredible height of fifty or sixty feet. The boards which compose the flooring of this bridge being designedly loose, (in order to float with the tide when it exceeds a certain height,) and prevented from escaping only by little pegs at the ends of them, do not afford a very safe footing for the traveller ; and some aukward accidents have been known to arise from this cause. A singular adventure occurred, about twenty years ago, to a female, as she was passing it at night, which tells so much to the credit of the ladies, that it would be unpardonable in a Tourist who is less an admirer of the sex than myself, not to detail the particulars. The heroine in questionwas a Mrs. Williams, well known in the town, and living there- till within these few years: she had beento spend a cheerful evening at a neighbour's house on the eastern side of the river, and was returning home (I presume) at a decent hour, and in a decorous state. The night being ex- tremely dark, she had provided herself with a lantern and candle, by the assistance of which she found her way towards the bridge, and had already passed part of the dangerous structure. When about half seas over however, (don't mistake my meaning,) she unfortunately trod on a plank that had by some accident lost the tennons originally fixed to the ends of it, and had slipped from ...